What Happens In Vegas
by Lady-of-the-Refrigerator
Summary: Red clenched his fingers and stared until his vision managed to focus on a thin, gold band on his ring finger. What on earth…? [Lizzington, S6, 6/?]
1. Chapter 1

A splitting headache dragged a rather miserable Red from a deep but nonetheless restless sleep; the throbbing pain had simply become too intrusive to ignore any longer. So, too, had the fullness of his bladder—now that he was awake enough to recognize it, there was no chance he'd be able to fall asleep again unless he addressed the problem.

Which meant getting out of bed. Which meant waking up properly. Which meant persuading his body to _move, damn it_, which it very much did not want to do.

Exactly how much had he had to drink last night? Judging by his considerable tolerance levels, it had to be a lot. He pitied his poor liver.

Red ran a hand over his face as he yawned; he had regained just enough awareness to realize something felt… off… about said hand. When he finally opened his bleary eyes, light glinted off of something in his field of view. He clenched his fingers and stared until his vision managed to focus on a thin, gold band on his ring finger.

What on earth…?

Headache forgotten, he sat bolt upright in bed—alone, but the linens on the other side were rumpled and clearly slept in.

Just then, a retching noise came from the bathroom; Red was amazed that he could hear it over the sudden sound of his heart pounding in his ears. He stood and crept towards the door, noting the trail of discarded clothing on the floor. His trousers and vest, a pair of black leather boots that were obviously _not_ his, a blouse and a matching set of red lingerie…

Oh, boy.

The picture starting to form in his head had _clear_ implications about what happened the night before, none of them good. Red had been in an awful lot of sticky situations in his life, but he couldn't remember ever being in one quite like this.

He knocked softly on the bathroom door and cleared his throat.

"Are… are you all right in there?" he asked, and braced himself for an answer.

What he _hadn't_ prepared for was the door swinging open instead—and he most certainly hadn't prepared for who would be on the other side.

Red's heart came to a stuttering halt, then restarted again at double speed.

"Elizabeth," he breathed.


	2. Chapter 2

"God. I haven't had a hangover this bad since college," Lizzy groused, with the back of her hand pressed against her forehead.

Red quickly took in her disheveled appearance from head to toe. Her hair was a tangled mess, whatever makeup she hadn't managed to remove was smudged on her face. She was wearing his dress shirt from yesterday, messily buttoned up the front, and—by process of elimination—likely nothing else. A ring glinted on her finger, too.

Red swallowed thickly, mentally scolding himself for being so moved by the image she presented while simultaneously wishing he'd had the forethought to at the very least pull on his trousers before knocking on the bathroom door. He felt entirely too exposed at the moment, but considering the conclusions it was all but impossible to avoid jumping to, he was surely less exposed than he had been the night before. In any case, Lizzy seemed perfectly comfortable with his state of undress, so he didn't have to worry about that at the very least.

"Dare I ask what happened last night?"

"You don't remember either, do you?" She took a breath and let it out slowly, shaking her head. "In a weird way, I guess that's reassuring."

"I think you and I might have different definitions of the word 'reassuring'."

Lizzy met his gaze, holding it for a long moment before she finally spoke again. "I think we got married," she said.

Red held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers so as to draw her attention to the ring. "That much I gathered on my own."

"You have one, too." She reached out for his hand, taking a moment to toy with the band, spinning it back and forth on his finger. "I noticed mine when I was wiping the vomit off my mouth," she said, blunt in her anxiousness. "They're nice. I've never been much for yellow gold, but—"

"Elizabeth." She let go of his hand and it fell to his side. "Walk me through what you do remember."

"OK. That's fair." She crossed her arms and began to pace, chewing absently on the edge of her thumbnail. "I guess I have to start a little further back than last night, though. You know you've been… distant… ever since I told you that I was the one who…" She trailed off, either unable or unwilling to give voice to what she'd done to him again.

"And I get that, I do, but I started to worry it was gonna be… permanent. I thought you might be trying to cut me out of your life for good and I'll be honest—I'm not ready for that. I panicked; I'm not proud of it. When I found out you were going to Vegas, I booked a ticket on the first flight I could find and followed you.

"By the time I managed to track you down in a bar off The Strip, I had had a few drinks. You had, too. Maybe that should've set off warning bells for us to take it easy for the rest of the night, but I guess it didn't.

"When I saw you across the crowded room, so boisterous and charming and so full of life, I just… I can't even explain what it felt like. I called out to you like… like… I don't know. I must've seemed so… desperate. It wasn't my best moment. But I found you and that's all that mattered to me.

"There you were, surrounded by an entire table full of total strangers; you won them over completely, because of course you did. It's what you do. You captivate people. They were fully invested in you by the time I showed up. And the way you reacted when you noticed me, those few seconds before your mask came back up… That was captivating, too. It gave me hope that maybe this wasn't… over."

"Over. You thought—"

"Of course I did," Lizzy said, sharply. "You've been making every excuse in the book to avoid me. After what happened, how else was I supposed to see that?"

"I don't know," Red admitted, with a shrug of his shoulders and a shake of his head. "All right. So you found me in the bar—then what?"

"You waved me over and we gave the people you were sitting with some sort of bullshit, off-the-cuff explanation for how we knew each other, but they saw right through us to the truth of who we really were—just two miserable idiots too foolish to figure out how to deal with caring about each other. I think at that point they tried to set us up? There might've been a drinking game involved, I'm not sure. Everything gets fuzzy after that. But I guess at some point, we must have…"

"Gotten married," Red finished for her. He took a slow, deep breath and sat down on the bench at the foot of the bed. "What the hell were we thinking?"

"I'm not sure we were thinking all that much, to be honest," Lizzy said. "We were probably running pretty exclusively on emotions, by that point. All I know is according to this—" she snatched up a piece of paper, a marriage certificate, from the desk—"I am now apparently… Mrs. Bill Kershaw."

Red took the paper from her and ran his thumb over the embossed foil seal. "You mean to tell me we were drunk off our asses, yet somehow we actually still had the wherewithal to go out and get a marriage license?"

"The wedding might have just been ceremonial—maybe we told them we were renewing our vows or something, I don't know… I guess that's something we'll have to look into today."

Red nodded, still staring down at the document in his hands, filled with a perverse sort of wonder. As absurd a situation as this was, there was a tiny, infinitesimal sliver of him—the sliver that had once been responsible for overwrought teenaged poetry and the names of crushes carved into wooden desk tops—that wanted to swoon at the sight of Lizzy's name next to his in this context, even if his name was only one alias of many.

He shook himself when he felt the cushion dip under Lizzy's weight as she gingerly sat next to him on the bench; he handed the marriage certificate back to her, not quite suppressing the shiver that ran through him as her fingers brushed his. When he glanced over at her, he caught her looking not at the paper, but at his lips; she quickly looked away.

"It can't be a legal marriage either way, though, right?" Lizzy asked softly. "Bill Kershaw doesn't really exist."

Red sighed. "That's the problem. He exists nearly as much as you do in the eyes of the law. He even has a social security number."

"Jesus."

"You realize this is a large part of what I do—facilitating the creation of false identities with such thorough paper trails that no one would ever have reason to doubt them. The marriage might not be legally binding inasmuch as my name isn't really Bill Kershaw, but it might be more complicated for you, because legally speaking Bill Kershaw _is_ real—you might need to get an annulment."

"Yeah, I know, I've… God, I didn't think I'd ever have to deal with this _again_."

Good lord, Red thought, his stomach churning. He hadn't even considered that particular implication. Were they doomed to have the shadow of Tom fucking Keen follow them around for the rest of their lives?


	3. Chapter 3

"It says here they have a complimentary breakfast buffet," Lizzy said, her voice raised slightly for Red to hear through the bathroom door. He dried off his face, checking the mirror to make sure he didn't leave shaving cream in any hard to reach areas, and then pulled open the door.

"Until what time?"

"Noon, thankfully." Lizzy looked up from the hotel pamphlet and sucked in a breath, her eyes widening. "You look nice."

Red gave his own clothing a once-over. He had dressed casually, in a style that wouldn't look out of place on any other wealthy, middle-aged tourist vacationing in the desert. "Do I?"

"Yeah. I look like I forgot to check the weather report before I got on a plane. Which is true." She offered him a crooked smile; his chest tightened.

Indeed, Lizzy's outfit ended up bearing a striking resemblance to outfits she had worn when they were on the run together—namely her leather boots and the same black skinny jeans she'd worn the night before, paired with an undershirt pilfered from his suitcase over the lacy red camisole he'd found on the floor that morning, with a thin hoody pulled on over everything.

All in all, her outfit was not very well-suited for the desert, but it was certainly as appealing to Red as his was to her. Those teasing hints of red were enough to drive him to distraction all on their own, but he managed to marshal his attraction and ignore the tiny voice in his head that had quickly developed a fondness for taunting him with the idea of what a true marriage between them would be like.

Red forced himself to meet her eyes, but her expression made it clear that he wasn't quite fast enough to keep her from noticing just where he'd been looking.

Lizzy set the pamphlet on the desk and approached him, reaching a tentative hand up to touch his freshly shaven cheek. "Mm, you smell nice, too. New aftershave?"

He gave a small shake of his head, nearly all of his attention focused on where her fingers rested on his skin.

"Must just be you, then," she said, and took her hand away with a lingering caress.

Red let out a breath. Maintaining the strength of his resolve where Lizzy was concerned would be very difficult for him if she kept touching him like that.

* * *

The line for the buffet stretched its way around the outside of the hotel dining room. Red and Lizzy moved through it rather slowly, passing over a majority of the choices in favor of filling their plates with some of the lighter fare available. Toast and fruit and tea were really all that either of them could stomach, both from last night's overindulgence and the nerves of the morning. Breakfast would be more of a necessity for them than an enjoyable excursion, unfortunately.

"Do we have to worry about any of your… friends… making our lives difficult today?" Lizzy asked out of the corner of her mouth as her eyes scanned the crowded room.

"Thankfully, I finished negotiations with my contacts yesterday afternoon, and I have it on good authority that they left the city immediately. The day is free for us to do with it what we wi…" He trailed off when he noticed the inscrutable expression on her face. "What is it?"

She tilted her head close to his and whispered, "I was afraid you'd only gone to Vegas to get away from me."

"I assure you, I had other relevant business here."

"So avoiding me was only a perk?"

Red pursed his lips and exhaled roughly through his nose; Lizzy deflated a bit.

"Look. I'm being… flippant. I'm sorry. I have a stiff neck and an upset stomach and a hell of a headache. Let's just get some food in us and see if that helps us think straight. The sooner we can figure out what exactly we did last night, the sooner we can figure out what we need to do to fix it." She nodded across the dining room. "There's a free table in the corner, by the window."

Lizzy picked just about the best spot available in the bustling restaurant. As usual, Red took the seat that would put his back to the wall so he could keep an eye on the room. They set their trays down on the table and began to unload all the plates and mugs and silverware.

"Our first stop should be the chapel."

"Makes sense. How are we gonna handle that?"

Lizzy took a cautious sip from her mug. The morning sun caught on the sparkling stone in her ring and Red found himself momentarily distracted. His mischievous mind whispered that this was their first breakfast together as a married couple, but he shook himself; even entertaining such thoughts was madness.

By unspoken agreement, they'd both chosen to wear their rings to help curtail any questions from people they might have interacted with the night before. That's all this was. That's all it could be. No matter how much Red would like to imagine he could remember what it felt like to have Lizzy to slide his ring onto his finger last night, how her touch would've lingered, how she might've looked into his eyes…

He cleared his throat and took a sip from his own mug. "We keep it vague, play off whatever they say to us. We have no earthly idea what story we gave them last night."

"God. It could've been anything. What do you think we would've told them?"

He shrugged. "Bill Kershaw is a well-established alias, but other than the details that come with the identity…"

"Well, how about we start with that? Brief me on Bill Kershaw."

Red did as Lizzy asked, and decided to allow himself, if only for a few moments, to enjoy the back and forth, enjoy her nervous chatter and her sharp eyes, secure now in the knowledge of her true feelings for him—and the nature of them—in a way that was impossible to ignore.

It would be terribly easy to get caught up in the fevered fantasy made real of his ring on her finger. If he was a wise man, he would try to keep himself as emotionally detached as possible.

More and more, he doubted that he qualified as a wise man at all.

* * *

Stomachs full and mostly settled, Red and Lizzy made their way to the parking lot to find his rental car. They waited in relatively companionable silence for the air conditioning to take the edge off the heat, but just as Red was about to pull out of the parking spot, Lizzy stopped him.

"Hey, before we go… can I tell you something?"

Red nodded, wondering if he should brace himself. She seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

"I-I just wanted to say that if I had to wake up married to anyone, I'm glad it was you."

"Elizabeth…"

"No, I mean it! Look, I know we're not on great terms right now. For a multitude of reasons. But I'm glad it's you. Not because I want to put you through another awful thing, but… I know you would never take advantage of the situation to fuck me over. And I appreciate that, I really do."

"That's a pretty low bar."

"Not really. What I'm really saying, I guess, is that I trust you. We may butt heads—a lot—but I know you, and I know you and I can work together and figure this out like adults. Even if you and I probably have more baggage in our relationship than I have with anyone else by far, I don't know if I could handle going through this with any of them. Frankly, I don't even want to think about the alternatives."

"You mean you wouldn't enjoy seeing Donald deal with the blow his ego would take if you slept with him and didn't remember?"

Lizzy snorted. "God, no."

"Or the self-righteousness?"

"Please. That's a nightmare scenario."

Lizzy's laughter was contagious. "Poor Aram would be too flustered to make eye contact with you for weeks."

"With me? With anyone! And he'd probably feel guilty that _he_ couldn't remember."

"Dembe is far too responsible to end up in this mess in the first place."

"Oh my god. Dembe is going to _kill_ us."

"What, you don't think he'll be happy we went straight from keeping major, life-altering secrets from each other to marriage in .0001 seconds flat?"

"He wants us to _communicate_ with each other, not get blackout drunk and fall into bed," she said. "That's pretty much the opposite of communicating."

"I don't know. It's worked out pretty well for me in the past."

"And this time it even got you a wife!"

It felt good to laugh, and to laugh like this with Lizzy was a dream. Red couldn't remember the last time he had any lasting relief from the tension in his body. It might have been months. It might have been _years_.

When they finally caught their breath and met each other's eye, they gradually started to come back to themselves, but the atmosphere between them had lightened considerably.

Lizzy covered his hand on the gear shift. "Why are you being such a good sport about all of this, anyway? Isn't your ego bruised?"

Red shrugged and put the car into drive. "I'm used to it."


	4. Chapter 4

Red and Lizzy barely made it through the doors of the chapel before the woman at the front desk greeted them, and a little overly enthusiastically, at that. Her eyes brightened and she jumped to her feet, sweeping across the lobby towards them like they were long lost friends. It was a bit overwhelming, to say the least, considering it _seemed_ like he had never seen her face before; judging by the way Lizzy grabbed his forearm and tensed at his side, she felt very similarly.

"Hello again! We thought we might be seeing you two today!"

They exchanged a glance, feeling more than a little awkward as the woman ushered them over to the desk. "You did?"

"Of course! You guys left without your photos last night," she explained. "Barry, the Kershaws are back!"

"Um, about last night—"

"Oh, don't you worry your pretty little heads about a thing. You two seemed very preoccupied with each other, which is completely understandable. I'm just relieved you came back before you left town; you didn't leave us any way to get in touch with you to send along the photos or the DVD of your ceremony."

They exchanged another glance. There was a video?

"Sorry we left you hanging like that. You're such a sweetheart for saving everything for us," Lizzy said. "What do we owe you?"

"Oh, you're all paid up. And let me just say, we really appreciate your generosity. We'll finally be able to have the awning out back reprinted to fix the, uh…"—she lowered her voice to a whisper—"unfortunate spelling error."

A man, presumably the aforementioned Barry, came out of the back room carrying a decorative display folder with a design printed on it that was… slightly tacky, to put it politely, as well as a DVD case with a custom paper insert proclaiming that it contained _Bill and Lizzy's Wondrous Wedding Ceremony_.

"It's good to see you folks again."

"It really would've been a shame if these were forgotten, isn't that right, Barry?"

"Oh, yes. They're truly something special. I'm sure you'll want to show your kids someday." He set the folder on the desk with a flourish. "Go ahead," Barry encouraged. "Sneak a peak."

Lizzy pulled the folder to their side of the desk and, with the gravity and trepidation of uncovering a rare artifact from a bygone era, flipped it open under the expectant, watchful eyes of the two employees.

Red's heart leapt into his throat as his gaze fell on the photos, page after page of 4x6 prints fitted into display slots in the thin, glossy cardboard.

"Wow," Lizzy breathed, almost inaudibly; Red wasn't sure she was aware she had spoken at all.

In that moment, all of their plans went out the window. There was no need to ask any probing questions about what happened the night before, no need to poke or prod to tease out their mental state or thought processes. Their intentions were more than plain.

Their decision to marry each other was impulsive as hell, yes, lubricated by copious amounts of alcohol—but it wasn't a farce. In the photos, he and Lizzy looked at each other as though they were the only two people in the world. Their dedication to each other emanated from the images in an almost tangible way.

It was like being sucker-punched by an alternate reality where anything was possible, and yet somehow it wasn't an alternate reality at all. Not even a day separated the two people in the photos from the two people who now stood shoulder to shoulder studying them, hoping to glean their thoughts.

Sensing the shift in Red's mood, Lizzy grabbed his hand and tugged him surreptitiously in the direction of the door. He snapped out of his reverie just long enough to help her gather their things and tuck them under his arm.

"We really have to get going now," she said. "Lots to do and see while we're still in town. Thanks again for everything!"

Red made it back to the car with no real recollection of the walk there. Liz gave him an indecipherable look when he held open her door for her. She took the folder and the DVD from him and sat, watching him silently even as he shut her door and made his way around to his own.

Without saying anything, he pulled into traffic and turned into the parking lot of the first establishment out of eyeshot of the chapel. He put the car in park and tried to focus on anything but the pounding of his heart in his ears.

"I'm sorry."

"Elizabeth, you didn't… We both…" He leaned back against the headrest and pressed his fingers against his eyelids, taking a deep, calming breath. Or tried to, at least. Try as he might, he couldn't fight off the tears burning in his eyes.

His breathing hitched and Lizzy pleaded, "God, Red, you can't lose it, because if you lose it, then I'm definitely gonna lose it."

Her pleas made no difference. It was all too much—the roiling pit of emotion finally reached a boiling point. Not just today, but all of it. Years of turmoil and danger and strife. Of affection and fondness and terrifying _need_.

There they sat, side by side in a rental car parked outside an all-you-can-eat buffet in Las Vegas of all places, and _sobbed_.

"I wish we could remember," Lizzy said, her voice very small. "We look so…"

"Happy," he supplied, because _'in love'_ was too dangerous a thing to say.

It was accurate, however. They looked like they were in love.

And weren't they in love? Despite their best efforts, their better judgement? Weren't they hopelessly and irrevocably in love? Wasn't that the problem? If the ties between them weren't so inescapable, if they _could_ sever them like they had other confusing and tumultuous ties in their lives, then they wouldn't be nearly as miserable, would they?

But there was no artifice in those pictures, no walls, no resentment. Red had never experienced the two of them interacting with such openness before, but there it was in brilliant color—only neither of them remembered any of it.

Life was more than unfair; it was cruel and petty and perverse.

And they hadn't even watched the video yet. What new torments would that uncover?

Lizzy was the first to begin to get a hold of herself; she scrubbed at the tracks left by her tears as they had run down her face.

"OK. Come on. We gotta pull ourselves together." She reached across the center console and patted Red on the knee. "Let me treat you to lunch. This place looks interesting."

She was up and out of the car before he had time to object.

Swiping his forearm across his face, Red hustled to catch up to her. "You don't have to treat me."

"I know. But I want to."

Impulsively, he slipped his hand into hers as they walked; she looked up at him in surprise. "People here think we're newlyweds—we should look the part, shouldn't we? Just in case?"

Lizzy seemed energized by the suggestion. "All right. Yeah. Let's make a show of it. We're newlyweds, married just last night—you're the adventurous one, but you're still kind of snobby and I'm the stick in the mud you're trying to convince to stop taking everything so seriously." She glanced at him but looked away quickly before she said, "I love you enough to give it a shot."

"And knowing you're doing it because you love me makes the effort mean all the more to me."

A small smile tugged at Lizzy's lips as she leaned over and gave Red a quick kiss on the cheek.


	5. Chapter 5

'All you can eat' was an extremely apt description of the restaurant, and Red and Lizzy did their damnedest to test the veracity of it. Thankfully, their appetites were much healthier than they had been at breakfast. Between the two of them, they must have tasted everything in the buffet twice over, including the desserts.

_Especially_ the desserts.

Lizzy had even offered Red forkfuls from her own plate a few times, which he was more than happy to sample. Eating their feelings provided a welcome, if temporary, respite from the pain and confusion, and they left the buffet much lighter than they entered it.

Figuratively speaking, at least.

It had also been the first time they'd ever allowed themselves to be so liberal with physical affection in public. Which, to be quite honest, felt _amazingly_ natural. And freeing! They spent so much of their time around each other out and about keeping themselves within certain boundaries of acceptable behavior, but anyone who saw them together now would likely assume they were head over heels for each other. Which, exhilaratingly, would not be an incorrect assumption to make.

As luck would have it, they had a chance to put that hypothesis to the test as they strolled down the sidewalk towards Red's car arm in arm.

"Bill?" came a voice from behind them. It was fortunate that Red had used Bill Kershaw as an alias for such a long time, because he had no trouble responding when the name was called as if it was really his own.

He and Lizzy turned around to find a shy, nervous man maybe a few years younger than Red standing a little way down the sidewalk. Red remembered having a rather compelling conversation with him at the bar last night about longing and loneliness, before Lizzy showed up and his drinking had really gotten out of hand.

"George?"

"Yes! I wasn't sure if you'd remember me."

"Of course I remember you. It's good to see you again!" Red said, embracing the man with an affectionate slap on the back.

"You, too, Bill. You, too." He turned to Lizzy with his hand outstretched and she shook it. "Lizzy, right?"

"Yeah."

"When you two left together last night, the rest of the table took bets. I'm almost afraid to ask, but… how'd everything go? I assume it didn't end too badly since you're still here together."

"I think it's safe to say it went well," Lizzy said, showing off her ring with a giggle, putting on a newlywed giddiness that was only somewhat feigned.

Bill's eyes widened and he let out a small gasp.

"Oh my god, congratulations!" he exclaimed. "You seem like such a lovely couple, it would've been a shame if you let something as trivial as a job come between you."

"Jobs are a dime a dozen. This one right here—" Lizzy laid her hand on Red's chest—"is one in, oh… about seven billion."

Red covered Lizzy's hand with his and pressed a kiss to her temple. "I don't think I can put into words just how glad I am that we found each other."

"And got our heads out of our asses."

"That, too," Red said with a small chuckle.

"Well, I wish you two the best. If I run into anyone else from our impromptu pity party, I'll be sure to share the good news." George put his hand over his heart and gave them a tiny bow before going on his way.

Red and Lizzy looked at each other and grinned, before turning away with a sigh.

It felt _astonishingly_ good to be perceived as a couple because they could finally act like one, rather than because his contacts and associates tended to assume and insinuate as much on a regular basis. To be able to play that role, and have it technically not be a complete fabrication was refreshing to say the least. Hell, Red felt nearly euphoric, which certainly wasn't something he expected when he woke up this morning.

"That wasn't a total disaster," Lizzy said. "At least we know now we used work as an excuse for not being together."

"Some version of the truth is always easier to stick to than an obvious lie, especially if you happen to be, ehem… impaired in some capacity."

"Boy, that's an oversimplified explanation of what the roadblocks between us were if I've ever heard one…"

What the roadblocks between them _were_. What a thought. What a concept.

Had they truly demolished the bulk of those roadblocks in one night with their drunken optimism? Well, even if they hadn't, they had at least finally reached an understanding about their feelings for one another. Red wasn't consciously aware of how heavy the burden of that turmoil had been until the weight of it was lifted.

"All right, I'll give you that. But regardless, I think all in all we can call this a good day, don't you?"

"I do, yeah. I wasn't so sure it would be. You know. Considering how it started," she said, squeezing his hand. "But we figured some things out, put some pieces together about last night."

"Speaking of last night… we'll have to get to a pharmacy soon. It'll be nearly twenty-four hours by the time we get back to the hotel, and the sooner the better for the effectiveness of the…" Red felt Lizzy's body tense up against his. "What?"

Lizzy bit her lip, with an odd mixture of trepidation and guilt coloring her features. She looked like she was about to ask him for something utterly impossible. "Let's talk in the car."

They hustled the rest of the way to their parking spot, with Lizzy walking briskly enough that she was nearly pulling him along with her. He opened the door for her, then rounded the car and sank into his own seat. She cranked the air conditioning as soon as he started the engine.

"God, this AC is a godsend."

"Elizabeth," Red prompted once it became clear that she was stalling for time.

"Right." She took a deep breath and held it for a moment, before she let it out slowly. "OK, so… I was hoping maybe we could… skip the pharmacy. If that's all right with you. I know that's kind of a lot to ask, especially so suddenly, but…"

For a moment, Red forgot how to breathe. "What are you saying?"

"I mean… chances are nothing'll come of it, right? The odds wouldn't be great at this time of the month for me. But in the unlikely event something does come of it… if there's a chance for Agnes not to grow up as an only child like I did, I'd like to take it."

Red took the key out of the ignition again and turned to face Lizzy as much as the driver's seat would allow. "You mean you would want…" He didn't even dare verbalize what she seemed to be asking—that she might want to purposely take a chance at having a baby together; still, she nodded. "With me?"

"Is that so far-fetched? All of this has kind of been a wake-up call, hasn't it? There must've been some part of me that thought marrying you was a good idea, otherwise we wouldn't be in this situation. And there must've been some part of you that felt the same way about me. Even if it was just on a… a drunken whim and we didn't think about the complications, we wanted to do it. We wanted that experience, regardless of how permanent it was. There's gotta be a reason we did, right?

"I know what my reason must've been—I love you. I've finally accepted that, for all it implies. And if I love you and somewhere deep down think being _married_ to you is something I want, then it's not much of a leap to wanting you to be the father of my children, too. Would you be OK with the idea of having kids with me?"

"Elizabeth… I…" Red trailed off.

When it was broken down to the bare facts, it certainly didn't seem like a radical notion. If they were any other two people in the world, it wouldn't be. In fact, it was a cliche: _when two people love each other very much…_

But they had been through so much, put each other through so much. And up until last night Red was doing his best to go about his life, trying as he might to guard himself even after he knew how Lizzy felt, because he thought his heart might possibly be wounded beyond repair. But it didn't work. It couldn't work. Red couldn't stay away from Lizzy, not in the long term, and she apparently couldn't stay away from him.

And now they were _married_—with whatever level of legitimacy that entailed. Even if it wasn't at all legitimate in the eyes of the law, Lizzy was right. It revealed something about them that they could no longer easily put aside.

The moment they let their defenses—and inhibitions—down, they immediately chose to run to each other, to tie their fates together in the most conventionally recognized way they could find. It was absurd how mundane it was—they loved each other, and so they married each other. It was by far one of the least controversial things they'd ever done together, and yet somehow, paradoxically, also the most.

Red _should_ say no, should insist that this was an insane chance to take, but he didn't want to. No. What he wanted more than anything else in the world was to say yes—bold and unabashed.

In his more fanciful, self-tortuous moments, he'd dreamt of something like this—a world in which Lizzy would see him as a potential partner in life, not only a begrudging work partner. The desire only grew stronger after she told him about her fantasy and it had lined up so perfectly with his own… but never once did he believe that she could want _him_ to be the husband she spoke of, want to acknowledge him as the father of her children, no matter how much he desired it.

Until today.

All of the pain was so very fresh in his mind and heart. But the longing was, too. The longing for this, exactly this—for her to want him to fill _this _role more than any other she's had him try to fill.

Tentatively, Lizzy wrapped her fingers around his hand in his lap, bringing him back to the present. Concern colored her features despite her best efforts to look earnest and upbeat.

Good lord, she wanted this so much. Should he allow himself to want it, too? Should he allow himself to take this chance?

"OK. Yes. That's… yes," he said. "We'll leave this one time up to chance."

Lizzy's face broke out in a relieved grin and her grip tightened on Red's hand almost reflexively before she lifted it, cradled it between both of hers, and brought it to her mouth to press a kiss to the back of it.

It took every ounce of willpower Red possessed to stop himself from cupping Lizzy's cheek, running his thumb over the soft skin there, and pouring every hope and dream he never dared to name into a kiss. By god, they had to take _something_ slow.


	6. Chapter 6

"Maybe this would feel more innocent if we hadn't basically eloped last night."

Red sighed. He and Lizzy were at a standstill, quite literally speaking. They had taken care of their evening ablutions and now stood on either side of the bed, neither ready to be the first to take off their bathrobe and climb under the covers.

The last time they were between those sheets had been their wedding night.

The last time they were between those sheets, they'd made love.

Presumably.

"Are we even one hundred percent sure that we…"

"Oh, believe me—we did."

Red closed his eyes, feeling the tips of his ears go red.

"OK, so we did. Regardless, it shouldn't make a difference about tonight."

"You're right. It shouldn't. We've shared a bed before."

"To be perfectly honest, I don't think it was completely innocent any of those times either."

"Maybe not," she conceded, after a long moment. "But it used to be easier to pretend that it was."

"When you've exhausted all your other options, whatever's left must be the truth," he said. "If you'll excuse the bastardized Doyle."

"Maybe it's a good thing they didn't have a dvd player downstairs. If we're so worried about maintaining some illusion of propriety all of a sudden, I'm sure that video crosses all sorts of lines. Could be a bad influence."

"There's no need to trivialize this. I know I can trust myself with you when I'm fully cognizant of my actions, but apparently that's not necessarily the case when I'm not. When I'm at my best, I am more than capable of suppressing just how much I want you, but I'm afraid right now I'm not at my best."

"You think just because you want me, you're gonna what? Hurt me? You didn't hurt me last night; you've never been anything but gentle with me physically. And remember—I want you, too. In general. Most of the time," Lizzy said, her cheeks turning a rather fetching shade of pink at her admission. "Whatever we did last night, I promise you I was a _full_ participant. But right now, it doesn't matter if we want each other. Nothing's gonna happen. Neither of us is ready for anything to happen. We shouldn't be so hung up about it."

Red nodded slowly. "Intellectually, I understand that, but…" He trailed off with a shrug.

"Listen. I get why you're worried. Believe me, I do. A few months ago, if you told me this was where we were gonna end up, I would've thought you had finally lost your mind. The two of us have become _experts_ at hurting each other, in almost every other way than this. But look at us. We keep coming back to each other, too.

"If we're so scared to let each other go that we'll do almost anything—and I mean _anything_—to avoid it… why don't we at least give ourselves a chance to try the opposite? Try to do more than cling to each other but still keep each other at arm's length? Can it… Can it really be worse than what we've been doing?"

"What exactly do you want, Elizabeth?"

"I want a truce, to start with. I want to explore this. Really, truly explore this, once and for all. Not just as a cover story, not just in public, but when we're alone. If we're willing to take a chance on possibly having a kid together, we should at least _try_, right?" she said. "And right now? I want us to try to get some sleep. Tomorrow is a new day. Chances are, we're gonna look back on this moment someday and think it wasn't actually such a big deal after all. It's just a bed. We're just tired. It's just… us."

"I don't think there's ever been a 'just' us."

"I know. I think that's why we're here now," she said. "I don't think either of us expected to feel so deeply for each other, but we do and there's really no going back. We've tried, haven't we? Frankly, it's frightening—I've adjusted and adapted my way through a lot of losses, but even the thought of losing you permanently terrifies me. Usually I can put feelings like that in their place. Not with you."

"I think…" Red cleared his throat. "I think you already know just how much that's true for me, too."

"I do."

They fell silent for a long, heavy moment. If there hadn't been a bed between them, Red would've given in to the urge to reach out for her—they'd weathered enough storms in the past with hushed words and a warm embrace, after all. But it felt wiser now not to rely only on that, at least for the time being. To pace themselves.

"So what do you say? On three?" Lizzy asked.

Red snorted, but reached for the knot on his belt and waited for her to start counting anyway.

Once the countdown ended, they both untied their robes and draped them over the footboard. What they wore underneath was nearly identical—an undershirt and a pair of boxers taken from Red's considerable travel wardrobe. Red tried to ignore how Lizzy's nipples tightened under the soft fabric; Lizzy pointedly avoided glancing at him below the belt. It was only after they pulled the blankets over their bodies that they looked at each other again.

Red tamped down on the ache of longing in his chest. Lizzy had rolled the waistband of her pair over a couple times and had also cuffed the sleeves of the t-shirt in a mostly futile attempt to make his clothes more form-fitting, but it didn't matter how poorly her efforts had fared. The chance to see his own oversized clothing on her smaller frame… It was the sort of small intimacy that had always been missing between them, even when they were at their closest. It was a hint of the simple domesticity that could be possible between them, if they only gave themselves a chance.

Perhaps this really would be that chance.

After a moment, they snuggled under the covers facing away from each other.

"Goodnight."

* * *

Hours later, Red still hadn't managed to fall asleep—and judging by the number of times Lizzy had tossed and turned in the bed next to him, she wasn't having much more luck than he was.

"This is ridiculous," Red said, after a while.

Lizzy sighed. "Maybe we should just order a bottle or two of wine from room service and call it a night."

"That's what got us into this mess in the first place."

"It's not a bad mess," she said after a while. "We've made worse messes."

"That's assuming I didn't actually get you pregnant. Because if I did, this is right up there near the top of our impressive list of rather _colossal_ messes," he said, illustrating with his hand. "It still wouldn't be _bad_, per se. But it would certainly qualify as a mess. I don't think many people would disagree."

Lizzy slid herself a little closer and propped her head up on one arm. "Say it turns out I am pregnant… How on earth do I explain it to the Task Force? There's no easy cover now that Tom is gone."

"Explain it however you want to explain it," he said. "Your private life is your business, whether you decide to have a one night stand or enter into a committed relationship without disclosing that to them."

She held his gaze for a moment. "I guess the truth is out of the question."

Red's heart skipped a beat; Lizzy would consider being open about their relationship?

"They do still think I'm your father," he said, sardonically.

"Ressler doesn't."

"That's… good to know."

"I guess I should've given you a head's up about it," she said. "But we haven't really talked much since what happened and I didn't think it would be enough of an issue that it would be relevant anytime soon. It's not like I _planned_ on following you across the country, getting drunk, and marrying you."

"Our predicament does make things more complicated. And pressing. But I still don't understand _why_ Ressler in particular knows we're not related."

"He… knows how we feel about each other. I couldn't hide it from him while you were in prison—I was a mess, and it was pretty obvious why. If all of a sudden I'm pregnant, he's going to suspect that we… put aside our differences."

"I don't know how to feel about that."

"I don't know how you should feel about it. I'm just trying to think ahead here. Maybe we have to consider the possibility that we'll eventually have to disclose that we're not actually related. I mean, if we're gonna give _us_ a real shot, and it works out, it's gonna get real weird real quick for everyone else."

"Except Ressler."

"It'll be weird for him for other reasons."

"Ah. Dear Donald's unrequited crush?"

"Don't. It's not his fault that you and I are… the way we are."

"Hopeless," he said, meeting her gaze.

"Powerless," she added, and Red's chest clenched at the implication behind her using that specific word; chances were she wouldn't call back to that particular conversation by accident.

"Come here," Red said, finally, lifting his arm so she could tuck herself into his side. As soon as she did, he could feel the tension begin to bleed out of his body.

It was remarkable how having Lizzy safe in his arms was still such a balm to his senses, even after everything. If they weren't fighting against each other, if they weren't running so hard from the truth, maybe they really could find some peace together. Acknowledging their feelings for one another was certainly a step in the right direction. Secrets kept them separated, kept them from ever being able to see eye to eye even on things they naturally agreed on.

"Sweet dreams," he whispered.

"You, too."

Red sighed. "I think I will now."

Lizzy rested her hand on his belly, idly stroking her thumb back and forth as she drifted off to sleep.


End file.
